


A hundred billion stars

by stjarna



Series: Engineering vs Biochem - 2017 (Team Engineering) [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Engineering VS Biochem, F/M, Jemma's POV, Prose heavy (which I'm only pointing out 'cause it's so unusual for me and I'm excited), References to earlier seasons, Team Engineering, post s4 spec fic, space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-12-01 00:23:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11474715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stjarna/pseuds/stjarna
Summary: Gazing out into the universe through the windows of a space station. A Post S4 Spec fic with lots of feels.





	A hundred billion stars

**Author's Note:**

> Those familiar with my fics (and myself) will know that my strong point is usually dialogue and I always struggle to add the prose. Which is why this fic is kinda special to me, because somehow I got clobbered by the prose fairy or something (not in this note though... but in the fic ;) )
> 
> Banner by me (can you believe it?)
> 
> Huge thank you to @dilkirani for being my beta (once again) and to @AgentsofSuperwholocked for giving it a quick pre-read :)

Jemma stares out of the floor-to-ceiling windows of the empty common room area into the vastness of space. It’s late, most everyone either asleep or on night watch elsewhere. Her arms are wrapped tightly around herself. It’s not that she’s actually cold. The temperature on the space station isn’t too low. Quite on the contrary, it’s always perfectly well adjusted to create a comfortable atmosphere for its inhabitants. And yet Jemma feels as if ice crystals are slowly consuming her body and mind, as if space’s cold hand is reaching inside to grab her, freezing her soul at 2.7 Kelvin.

Memories flash before her inner eye, of a picture of space hanging on a dark concrete wall in an underground base, a spiral galaxy, Messier 74, about thirty-two million light-years from Earth, home to about a hundred billion stars.

 _Maybe it’s still there_ , she thinks for a moment.

Maybe it’s still hanging on the wall. Well. A different wall. A different bunk. Their bunk. But still the same underground base. Maybe it had fallen to the ground, shattered to pieces from explosions, fire, havoc; much like their hearts, their lives, everything they’d built. A hundred billion stars lying in a hundred billion scattered pieces of broken glass. Dust gathering on shards, a simple black frame, glossy paper, leaving the picture much like her mind, clouded and hazy.

_If the picture could talk, would it say more than a thousand words? More than a hundred billion? Would it tell their story? One of woe? One of sorrow? One of pain and loss and more pain and more loss? Or would there still be a hopeful glimmer? Happy memories of watching two people discovering something new, tentatively, a bit scared, but oh so excited? Two people clawing their way back to each other, through stormy waters, alien desert storms, virtual worlds, sometimes through their own inabilities to speak the truth, to be brave and throw caution to the wind._

Jemma gazes into the darkness in front of her. Except it isn’t really dark. There’s so much to see. So much light. Yet so much danger. Excitement and fear walking hand in hand every day.

_One of these days, we’ll find something out in space that’s magnificent, right? Not trying to infect us or kill us…_

Strange how similar it all seems and yet so very different.

It seems like half an eternity ago when they’d sat next to each other on the floor of his bunk; when fear and sadness had somehow turned into something that was so much lighter, into something that was a beginning, that was hopeful, that was magnificent, shining with the joy of a hundred billion stars cheering it on.

It seems so long ago now, when in reality it had only been—

She’s startled when Fitz suddenly steps next to her, when his quiet “Hey” breaks the dome of silence and solitude she’d built around herself, pulling her thoughts back through space and time, from Earth to Nowhere, from past to present.

“Hey,” Jemma whispers just as quietly, her eyes still frozen and fixed on the universe, which now shimmers blurrily in front of her. She can’t help but smile as she uncrosses her arms, letting them hang loosely by her side, trying to soften her posture.

It’s not like he’s been avoiding her. Quite the opposite. He always seeks to be close to her, making sure his breaks coincide with hers, seemingly always coming up with excuses to stop by the tiny lab she’d been assigned to. And yet, the more they try to talk—lighthearted, forced small talk—the more deafening the silence between them seems to become; the closer he stands to her, the further away he seems to be. His eyes can’t hide the constant battle raging in his mind; his gaze is sometimes so intense that Jemma feels like she can read entire pages of his deepest desires, thoughts, and fears. Her mind wants to scream back, beg him to say them aloud, to share, to confide like he used to.

But instead, she freezes herself each time, never knowing how to respond, afraid any step forward or backward could push him away or bring him closer and while one is everything she longs for, the other is too scary a thought to take that risk. The quiet status quo of each other’s silent company, sprinkled with superficial pleasantries, seems easier to bear than the thought of nothing left but her lonely soul missing a piece in his shape.

Jemma counts the seconds, the minutes they stand in silence next to each other because every moment she can spend this close to him feels like a small victory, feels like another moment gained.

His hand, shyly tucked away in his pocket, almost brushes against hers and yet an entire ocean of unspoken words lies between them.

Jemma stares back into the vastness of space, afraid to move closer, afraid to flinch away, afraid to do the impossible and break what could not possibly be broken into more microscopic pieces.

She closes her eyes, beginning another journey back to the past, back to Earth, back to when she’d dared believe she’d found everything she’d hoped for and more.

She draws in a short surprised breath when his hand suddenly snakes around her wrist and his fingers interlace with hers.

Somewhere in the back of her mind she sees them standing side by side with snow made from ashes raining down on them.

_Maybe some things are inevitable._

They’d risen from the ashes once. Stronger than before.

Maybe they could do the impossible after all. Gather all the microscopic pieces, a hundred billion little glass shards, and somehow put them back together, not to perfectly recreate what they’d had, but to shape something new, a new Phoenix, rising from the water that had once tried to swallow them, the desert earth and wind that had tried to rip them apart, the fires of hell that had freed them of one enemy only to throw them into the hands of an adversary pretending to be an ally.

_Maybe there is…_

Jemma sends out a silent wish to the universe she knows is hiding in plain sight if only she dared open her eyes again. But then, she’s too afraid the feeling of Fitz’s hand in hers, his thumb gliding across her knuckles, could disappear if she did.

“Happy anniversary.” His voice is barely above a whisper, and when Jemma’s head shoots around, tears rushing to her eyes with the force of a hundred billion missed heartbeats pushing them forward, she sees him staring at his shoes, his toes carefully tapping the floor.

“You remembered.” She barely recognizes her own voice, shaky and hoarse as if it were the first time she’s spoken in years. Her lips twitch, torn between wanting to smile and holding back tears, and Jemma’s not sure if she’s said it as a question or a statement.

Fitz lifts his chin, but his eyes cling to the floor as he inhales a slow, shuddery breath that rattles Jemma to her very core. “Hard to forget.”

Jemma grimaces, unsure how to interpret his words, hope mixing with doubt mixing with fear mixing with love. She keeps her eyes fixed on a space rock, floating by as if in slow motion, not daring to look at him when the question lingering in the back of her mind finally rolls quietly off her tongue. “Do you want to forget?”

Only after the last syllable escapes her lips together with an anxious exhale, does she turn to gauge his reaction.

He sighs, his gaze now focused on outer space much like Jemma’s had been moments ago. The blue of his irises seems darker than usual, the lights in the common area having been turned low at this late hour and space not offering much to brighten them. The corners of his lips tick up into a sad smile and his hand gently squeezes hers. “I want to forget a lot of things. But that’s definitely not one of them.”

When his head slowly turns and his eyes meet hers, and it seems like it’s the first time in months that he dares truly look at her, Jemma can’t stop tears of relief from snaking down her cheeks, while her lips pull into a pained smile. “I… I didn’t even know. I wasn’t even sure if… if we were still tog—if you thought we were still… if you wanted to—”

He stretches out his other arm, and when Jemma places her palm in his, feeling his fingers close around her hand, she can’t help but gasp at the sensation of their atoms, their worlds finally pulling back together, not just physically, but mentally as well.

His eyes are tear-rimmed, but there’s a hint of a smile playing on his lips that seems to shine brighter than anything he’d allowed himself to express since being released from a virtual hell in which he was the Devil’s right hand. “When someone holds you while you cry and you have no idea how they can even stomach sitting close to you, but somehow they’re there… When someone says ‘Amen. Amen, we’ll do this together’ after the other… after everything… when someone never pushes you away, for months, no matter how annoying your little visits might become—”

“They’ve been far from annoying, Fitz. They—”

 _They’ve been what I held onto every day. They’ve been what I looked forward to the most. They’ve been a glimpse of what was. What could be. What could be again_ , she tries to interject.

But he continues, one corner of his mouth ticked up ever so slightly while a single tear drops from his eyelashes onto his cheek, leaving a thin wet trail before dripping down onto her hands, where he holds them close together.

“Dunno—” He shrugs, quietly. “When somehow someone does all that, you get the feeling that maybe… maybe what you had, what you feel, what you thought the other felt too is still there one way or another. Maybe?”

She frees her hands from his grasp, cupping his cheeks instead. “It is, Fitz. It’ll always be there.”

She holds his face in her hands, staring into his eyes, trying to reach into his soul and tell him with more than words, with her body and mind and soul.

The way his lips pull into a smile so genuine and warm and void of fear makes Jemma believe that he truly heard her.

“Ditto.” The word is barely spoken loud enough to be heard and Fitz chuckles quietly as soon as he’s said it, his eyes strangely apologetic, as if he were embarrassed that he hadn’t found more poetic words to express himself.

Jemma smiles, letting her fingers glide gently across his stubble. “Ditto,” she whispers, hoping it’ll let him know that she’s heard every nuance, every hidden emotion he’d tried to convey.

When she notices him leaning closer, Jemma feels as if everything around them disappears, as if the space station and the universe, even their own bodies dissolve, merge, unify and become one until all that is left are their minds communicating silently with each other and their lips carefully moving against each other, trying to hold back like two people receiving food for the first time after months of starving, trying not to be too eager, trying not to overwhelm themselves, and yet savoring the taste, indulging in the moment.

Jemma doesn’t dare open her eyes when his lips reluctantly pull away from hers as the need for air becomes too great. She cherishes the feeling of their foreheads resting against each other. It’s familiar and safe and yet it feels like a treasure rediscovered after centuries of being buried under an entire world that had crumbled down on top of it.

She feels his breath on her lips, short and ragged, anxious and excited at the same time, much like her own. Her hands roam through his hair, feeling the curls that had been allowed to grow during their space exile glide between her fingers. She pulls his forehead even tighter against hers, worrying for a moment that the grip on the back of his head could be too strong, yet unable to make their connection any less.

“I love you, Fitz. I love you so much.”

She feels his body tremble, feels the same tidal wave of tears and emotions rushing through her own body. Yet, somehow she knows that he’ll hold onto her just as tightly as she’s holding onto him, that together they’ll be each other’s pillars like they used to be.

His hands move from where they’d been resting on her hips to her cheeks and reluctantly, Jemma allows him to push her face back; reluctantly she allows her eyes to open and suddenly it’s like she drowns in the love that shimmers in his eyes.

“I love you too,” he whispers, his fingers combing through her hair, pushing it gently out of her face. He sighs, smiling shyly, hesitantly, yet filled with hope. “I know this won’t fix everything, but—”

“It doesn’t have to.” Jemma shakes her head, her thumb absentmindedly wiping away the tears snaking down his cheeks. “It’s… it’s a step forward. A step we can take together. Knowing that we still are just that: together. A team. Friends. Best friends. Partners. Us. We’re still us, Fitz. We want to be us.”

Relief washes over his face, rushing through his body and leaving him more relaxed than Jemma’s seen him in months. He smiles as he once again tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear, before clearing his throat and shrugging ever so slightly. “I’m sorry I didn’t get you a present.”

Jemma laughs out loud, the sound echoing through the empty common area, bouncing off the walls and somehow engulfing her like a blanket made of relief, love, and happiness. “Oh, Fitz. Being with you is everything I could wish for.”

His smile grows a little wider, and his eyes shimmer a little brighter behind a thin curtain of tears. He leans down, pressing his lips gently against hers, like a quiet promise of a better future.

Fitz sighs deeply when he straightens, his lips still curled up. His hand brushes through her hair one more time before he wraps one arm around her shoulders, turning her slightly and pulling her against his side, so they can both look out into the bloody cosmos that never seems strong enough to pull them apart because their connection is stronger than any force the universe can throw at them, bound together like two magnets, defying the laws of physics because the law of ‘opposites attract’ somehow doesn’t apply to them. Somehow they’re both, two sides of the same coin, polar opposites, two bodies, one mind, one entity, two brains. Maybe that’s their secret.

Jemma curls both arms around his waist, resting her head against his shoulder. They stand wrapped in each other’s arms for a while, and Jemma turns her head to look outside the tall windows. It’s a different kind of silence between them this time. Not distant. Not awkward. Not longing and void of words. Not filled with words they do not dare to speak.

It’s a silence filled with unspoken words that don’t need to be said because they’ve already been spoken a hundred billion times before. Unspoken words that fill the air like the quiet whispers of a theater prompter, hiding in the shadows and yet always there. A love that’d been hiding, afraid, beaten and bruised, finally brave enough to show its face again and pick up where they’d left off. Except, maybe they’d never even left off. Maybe they’d simply been frozen in time and space until the coldness of the universe did the impossible and sparked a fire, a reminder strong enough and warm enough to melt their hearts and bring them back to life, back to the life they’d dare dream of, or maybe a different version thereof, a better version, a stronger version, rising from the ashes, rising from a hundred billion broken shards of a framed picture of a hundred billion stars.

Jemma notices the corners of her mouth tick up as she inhales his familiar scent mixed with the artificial air of the space station they currently call home. “Guess it really happened,” she contemplates, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Hmm?” he mumbles quietly, clearly being pulled out of his own meandering train of thought.

“We found something magnificent in space.” She rubs her head a bit closer against his shoulder, closing her eyes briefly, before tilting her head up to look at him.

He stares back at her, his blue eyes full of love, contentment and serenity, but his forehead wrinkled ever so slightly. Jemma feels like she can see the thoughts rushing through his mind, and yet they’re too blurry and hidden for her to discern their meaning. Eventually, his lips pull into the hint of a mysterious smile. He inhales slowly and looks up, back into the universe.

“Not true,” he remarks, matter-of-factly.

Jemma can’t help but smile, her eyes still focused on him, for space is no match for the beauty of his soul.

“It’s not?” she asks curiously, feeling an impatient flutter in her chest as his gaze remains fixed on the stars and rocks outside.

He shakes his head. “No. We haven’t found something magnificent in space.”

When he turns to finally look at her, his smile is wide enough to reach his eyes, brightening them as if the sun had risen in their own private world, as if all of a sudden a hundred billion stars were shining more brilliantly in their own spiral galaxy in which they are the center. He shifts, and Jemma mimics his movements until they once again stand facing each other, like a bride and groom on their secret wedding day. His hand curls around the back of her neck, and his thumb gently brushes against the soft skin below her ear. “Space has found something magnificent in us.”

If it were a different time, a different place, a different story, she’d tease him for such a cheesy sentiment. But with where they are now, with everything they’d experienced, suffered through, overcome, Jemma must admit that she feels rather magnificent herself.

She can’t help but smile, her fingers reaching up to comb through his curls, her eyes fixed on his, noticing the reflection of the universe merging with her own in his irises. Maybe they are the universe, maybe they’re time, maybe they’ve become like a spiral galaxy themselves, like his picture of space, his most prized possession, a hundred billion stars, some old, some new, forming a breathtaking formation that has existed since before the Earth was created and would exist forever more.

After all, no energy in the universe is created, and none is destroyed.

**Author's Note:**

> I had the idea for this fic when I realized that there was about a six-months jump between S3 and S4 and S4 basically happened in such a short amount of time (weeks really) that Fitzsimmons probably haven’t even been together for a full year yet at the end of S4. *sobs quietly*
> 
> I'm about 99% sure Fitz's space picture is [Messier 74](https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2132.html)


End file.
